


Thinking About Each Other

by betweentowns



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: A little angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, M/M, cute bluesy, really gooey musing about the Gangsey all being in love with eachother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-16 00:16:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16943397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweentowns/pseuds/betweentowns
Summary: The Gangsey bring Adam to college and Blue reflects on how much they all love each other. Based on this wonderful quote:“You can be just friends with people, you know,” Orla said. “I think it’s crazy how you’re in love with all those raven boys.”Orla wasn’t wrong, of course. But what she didn’t realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another. Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.” ― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue





	Thinking About Each Other

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy!!!!!!

Long car rides are miserable, dreadful things.

Long car rides with friends… are wonderful.

They’re in Ronan’s shark-nosed Beemer, which is weird in itself, so Gansey sits in the passenger seat rather than the driver’s for once. Blue lolls in the seat behind Gansey, her incongruously butterfly-clipped hair against the tinted window, bare feet tracing patterns in Adam’s khaki-covered lap.

They travel like that, cruising past trees that seem to be reaching out to them, curving towards the sleek black car as if to mark their path. The familiar warm tones of a southern fall fade slowly into the hard crispness of Northeastern’s autumn. The scenery becomes less Henrietta, more New England, and by the time they’ve reached New Jersey, Blue’s feelings are one with the altered setting: change is imminent.

In New England, change is hard to ignore. Blue promptly realizes that this is a place where people must embrace such phlegmatic change, where trees that go from verdant greens to riotous reds and oranges and yellows are precisely the norm. Where cloudy mornings that break into sunshine-filled afternoons and back into stormy evenings again are as expected as a still, hot, unchanging day back in Henrietta.

And yet the trees, Henriettan and New England's alike, reach out specifically to Blue and Gansey and Ronan and Adam as they travel, as if to announce that the reports of change being shouted from the facade of each leaf is predetermined, as if to assert that they plan to take Adam away from them and swallow him whole.

They are loud and boisterous and the epitome of _young._ And Blue finally gets what people mean when they say it's the journey, not the destination. They fall asleep like that. Taking turns sliding their eyes open to glance at one another until they’re too heavy to open. And then they sleep, and that is wonderful too. Because it's quiet and there's something so wonderfully enticing about sitting quietly with people she longs to be loud with.

Blue is smiling with the effort of keeping quiet when there’s so much to say and she wonders absentmindedly what they are all thinking about. But then she meets Ronan’s clear and steady gaze in the rearview mirror and grins because _of course_ they are all thinking about each other, each, in turn, wondering what the other is thinking about and somehow all still appreciating it--this beautiful bellowing silence and the quiet happiness it brings.

And they think about how they are young.

They’re young young _young,_ and they’ve never known what it is like to not be this way and right now it feels like they never will. Blue’s heart is so full to bursting that she feels dizzy with it. She wants to tell them--how she loves them all and loves them so much. Her friends. So she does.

"I love you guys," she says aloud,  but her voice is embarrassingly honest and I love you is what she meant but it's not quite what she meant. But then Adam laughs his tinkling laugh, and Gangsey nudges his delicate, ink-stained fingers against the back of her hand and she knows they understand. They know her and she knows them and never wants to know anyone else. It is a love that will kill them all.

The car lurches a little when Ronan steps on the gas fifty miles too fast as they get on the ramp to the highway, but even Blue —who’s only just newly licensed— can tell that the Pig could never attain such smooth grace.

She misses the Pig, but alas, _change._

And once they’re on the highway, their positively _flying._ It’s the type of car that moves with barely any coaxing at all, and Ronan knows how to drive it--well. He keeps in the lane farthest left, the fast lane, but even then the other cars allow them a wide berth; Ronan’s beemer is easily the nicest car on the road. A more primal part of Blue enjoys watching the faces of the other cars’ passengers as they pass by and see that the shiny black BMW is filled with teenagers--being driven by a teenager-- mostly because she’s sure she made a similar face the first time she saw her Raven boys in this car herself.

Even though Ronan’s driving, its Gansey who’s constantly craning his neck to check in all the mirrors. The theme today--the atmosphere of change--is taking a little bit longer to seep into his Aglionby skin.

“Not so fast, Ronan,” he says every now and then. It’s not what he means — he trusts Ronan to know his own limits. After all this time he is really, _finally_ giving Ronan a chance to make his own choices and more importantly make the right ones. And Gansey himself is a teenage boy in love with cars and the speed of their wheels spinning beneath them. What he really means is, _Be careful._

Ronan just rolls his eyes. What he really means is, _of course._

“The trees are so pretty,” Adam repeats. Like he is convincing himself.

Ronan laughs, meets his eyes in the rearview like he’d did Blue’s. “Nothing like Cabeswater.”

Gansey beats Adam to replying. “There’s nothing like Cabeswater.”

They all make varying noises of agreement. There’s nothing like Cabeswater, nowhere like Henrietta.

Adam will be 400 miles away.

They’re bringing Adam to school.

It’s a bittersweet moment. Everyone’s insanely proud — Adam manages to graduate as valedictorian at Aglionby. Princeton was quick to offer him a free full ride, and Adam was just as quick in accepting. This is what he had wanted, after all. Why he’d been working so hard.

But it’s as sad a moment, too — and they all have their own reasons as to why.

It’s simple for Blue. Adam's one of her best friends and she will miss him.

For Gansey, it’s a little bit harder.

Because he’s actually wanted this for Adam — in a different way than everyone else. He understands what it’s like to strive for one thing for so long, to place it above all else, and do everything you can for it. He was the one behind-the-scenes, pushing Adam to keep studying, keep doing his homework. It was Gansey who stayed up nights comparing geometry answers and stayed after to give Adam rides home from debate team meetings. Even when he thought Adam was pushing himself too hard, he could understand. Gansey got it.

So it made no sense why he felt himself pulling back, now, at the very last moment. It made no sense why all summer he had felt like phoning the Princeton admissions office and asking them for a little more time.

The problem was one that Blue had explained to him in the most no-bullshit-acceptable tone just last week: “You’re scared to let your birds out of the nest… You like all of your eggs in one basket, you know?” Then she had shrugged and continued painting her toenails — a different color for each — and said, “You can’t help it.

It was true. Blue and Maura had found cheap plane tickets to Europe, where they planned to tour until the year ended. They had spent a lot of the summer experimental road tripping and even those short 2 and 3-night trips had made Gansey’s heart ache a little. He’d visit whenever he was allowed, of course, but Blue had made it clear she needed this — a girls trip.

Ronan was leaving, too — not nearly as far, but it’s not like Gansey had permission to visit him and Opal at the Barns... yet. And of course, he’d be up visiting Adam every weekend Adam could stomach it, even if he would deny it. Even Henry would be off at NYU.

It was Gansey who had taken a gap year.

It was Gansey who, for once, had nowhere to be and no purpose.

It was Gansey who would be spending the foreseeable future still at Monmouth.

Alone.

But as hard as it was for Gansey to watch Adam pack for college. It was harder still for Ronan. Ronan, who got attached like glue to everyone he loved. Ronan, who would have to peel himself off and not say a word about how bad it hurt — because that’s what Ronan did. If his father’s death had taught them anything, it was that he wasn’t good with loss. In any form. He was putting distance between him and Gansey for a reason... He won’t hurt his feelings like he did that first time again.

When they get to the college town, it’s early afternoon -- thanks to Gansey’s careful planning and insistence that they leave at exactly six that morning. They stop at a pizza restaurant. It’s not Nino’s, but they can pretend. Adam barely eats one slice before declaring he wants to survey campus and start moving his stuff in. “Ronan?”

Ronan shrugs an uninterested, “Sure. You cool without a car, Dick?”

Gansey just waves them off. “We’ll be fine,” he says, and doesn’t protest-- still sighs-- as Adam slides money on the table to pay for his portion.

When they leave, Blue and Gansey finish the pizzas (Gansey picks off all the toppings he doesn’t like and obediently places them on the corner of Blue’s plate.) (She eats them all.)

Gansey and Blue saunter around the campus and let Ronan and Adam have their time alone. A college campus is a place where two teenagers can walk hand-in-hand without attracting any particular notice. Sometimes Blue forgets that outside of Henrietta they’re not Blue Sargent the Psychic’s Daughter and Richard Campbell Gansey III the Raven Boy. They’re just Blue and Gansey. And if they want, they can just be girlfriend and boyfriend. A girl and a boy.

After an hour or so of walking, Gansey leads her to a bench seat that was donated by the ‘Princeton Law Class of 2012.’ Together, they watch students, professors, and parents walk by and the only thing Blue can think is that it’s all just a bigger Aglionby. She sincerely hopes Adam can be happy here.

The thought pushes another to the front of her mind, and she voices it to Gansey. “Are Ronan and Adam dating?”

“Err… ” The truthful answer was yes, but saying no was an answer just as honest. “Honestly, I don’t know. I think… I think they make each other happy, and I think Ronan needs some happiness, and Adam too. They’re so different, but the one thing I can say they have in common is that they don’t think labels are important.”

“Hmm… Me, too,” Blue replies.

“You too, what?”

“I don’t think labels are important, either.”

“Me neither,” Gansey agrees. They’re both quiet for a moment, before he adds, “I still like calling you my girlfriend, though.”

Blue laughs and the midday sun hits her profile perfectly, reflecting off her pearly teeth and turning her hair into an angel’s halo.

“I wish you wouldn’t leave,” Gansey tells her candidly, threading his fingers through hers and resting his head on Blue’s shoulder. “I wish none of you would leave. A part of me kind of wishes we all could stay in high school, in Henrietta, forever.”

Blue uses the hand that’s not intertwined with his to run her fingers through his hair. He’s started to not style it as much as he’s realized how much they both enjoy her touching it and messing it up. Even if it still looks perfect when she’s done.

“It’ll all work out,” she says confidently. Because it will. They’ve all been through so much it’d be unfair if the universe decided to sweep the rug out from any of them again. Blue can admit that it’s odd not having so many things hanging all over her head like they had been the past two years. To be honest, she _misses_ constantly searching for Glendower, even when it caused more harm than not -- so she can’t imagine what it must be like for Gansey, who had been searching longer than all of them.

She sees the empty look in his eyes sometimes, sees his mind wander and his face pale as his thoughts drift to the things he’d rather not think about. As the weeks passed, it became easier to pull him from his little trances--a chaste kiss on the corner of his lips from Blue, an unexpected offer to work on construction projects around Monmouth from Ronan, a well-timed, well-worded history question from Adam. And in less than three days, Gansey would be the last one left in Henrietta. Blue knows he’ll be okay, but she can’t help but worry a little. Now, though, she presses a kiss into his perfect hair -- still, after all this time, reveling in the fact that she can _do_ that. “It’ll work out,” she repeats.

They both straighten up as the seductive purr of the BMW indicates that Ronan and Adam are back. “Want to see the dorm?”

* * *

 The sun is setting when they hit the highway again. Ronan offers to let Blue drive for an hour with a, “Relax, Gansey.”

Back on campus, Adam had been left fairly easily. There’d been no dramatic goodbyes, no tears--that wasn’t any of their styles. Everyone is much more comfortable ignoring that it was a goodbye at all, that they

Just because they wouldn’t be seeing him every day didn’t mean their friendships would be any weaker. They would be okay. All of them. Change doesn’t have to be terrible.

At night, it was hard to tell what color exactly any of the trees were. Everything was dark, dark, dark. _We could still be in New Jersey,_ Blue thinks as she drapes her wrist over the steering wheel. _We could be back in Henrietta._

Street lamps and car headlights fly pass like fireflies in the dusk. In the backseat, Ronan’s eyes are closed lightly, eyelashes casting mesmerizing shadows over his fine cheekbones. It’s hard for Blue to tear her eyes away from the rearview mirror. She’s looking at Ronan, at his careful expression even in false slumber, grieving in his new, quiet way. She’s looking at Ronan, but she’s thinking of Adam, who would’ve enjoyed those wispy shadows.

She sighs. She’s missing him already if only because of the ways she knows Ronan and Gansey will miss him.

It’s quiet because they’re all thinking. Ronan is thinking about how bad he will feel leaving Gansey alone. Gansey is thinking about Blue--about his own love leaving like Ronan’s left today. Blue is thinking about Ronan. Those eyelashes. Adam. Gansey ’s knuckles over her thigh, his watchful eyes scanning the dark road ahead of him as if he’s the one driving.

As she eases her foot off the gas pedal while directing Ronan’s shark-nosed car through a curve, she imagines Adam, back in his dorm with someone who is none of them, is thinking about all of them, too.

Each of them, in turn, thinking about each other.

Like always.

  


**Author's Note:**

> If this looks familiar, it's because it's a repost! I had to take this down for a little while, but now that it's back I added some edits and it's better than ever!  
> P.S. The quote in the summary is probably my favorite from the Raven Cycle series; I literally think about it all the time, especially when I'm doing crazy shit with my own friends.  
> Let me know in the comments if you guys want more TRC or PJO stuff...Or literally anything. I'm at a bit of a lull with schoolwork right now, so writing fic's where I'm at while I avoid the bigger project I'm working on. Just leave a pairing/prompt/book/show/show whatever down below, and if I've heard  
>  of it, I'll write it! :)  
> Thank you for reading <3  
> Lots of love,  
> Betweentowns


End file.
